2012 Master's Level Graduate Research Conference

This poster presentation focuses on assigning critically ill patients to the respiratory care unit at Rochester General Hospital.This unit operates with a mixture of semi-private and private bedrooms. Most patients in the unit are hospitalized for long periods of time due to their respiratory complications causing the unit to operate mostly at full capacity. Those personnel responsible for the unit must determine when to admit new patients, whether current patients need to be discharged to accommodate a new more critical patient, or if there is a need to reassign rooms to already admitted patients (i.e., internal movement). These decisions are complicated by the limited number of single and double bedrooms, but also by isolation guidelines implemented to prevent healthcare associated infections (HAIs). A non-linear mathematical model was developed for this assignment process. To experiment the reliability of the model a Monte Carlo simulation experiment was used to determine how the model would perform over historic demand. The objective of the model is to maximize the admission of critical patients while reducing the number of internal movements.